A self-organizing network (Self-Organizing Network, SON) is a critical type of standardization work engaged by a 3rd generation partnership project (The 3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP) standard organization in an R8/9/10 working period, and its core idea is to reduce traditional manual operations by using an automation process at phases of network planning, deployment, optimization, and maintenance, and to reduce maintenance costs of network operators.
A communication cell has an abnormal working state. A cell in this state is unable to provide normal communication services, and a user equipment (User Equipment, UE) residing in this cell cannot establish a communication connection, or a user equipment in an ongoing communication in this cell is disconnected due to the lack of ability to maintain the communication connection. In addition, a cell is in this abnormal working state not because an energy-saving operation is performed in the cell but because a severe failure occurs in the cell. Cells in this case are called outage cells. A system needs a capability of cell outage detection automatically to trigger an outage cell recovery operation or an energy-saving cell deactivating operation, to make the cell return to a normal working state. This automation process of cell outage detection belongs to a self healing (Self Healing, SH) category of the self-organizing network.
Currently, most of methods for cell outage detection are implemented inside a base station. Cyclic detection is performed on specific software and hardware inside the base station, an external power supply system or network connections to determine whether a cell outage failure occurs, and the base station reports a cell outage alarm. This method is strongly correlated with the implementation of the base station, and is limited to the base station only. Another enhanced method is that a network management system periodically collects key performance indicators (Key Performance Indicators, KPIs) and/or performance measurements (PM, Performance Measurements) of the cell; if a performance indicator, such as a radio resource control (Radio Resource Control, RRC) connection setup success rate, or a disconnection or call drop rate (hereinafter referred to as “disconnection/call drop rate”) of the cell exceeds a preset threshold within one or several reporting periods, the network management system considers that an outage failure occurs in the cell. These methods all consider the base station only, which may lead to a consequence that a cell has been in an outage state for a long time without being known, so that the time used to determine an outage cell is prolonged or the probability of misjudging an outage cell is increased, thereby greatly degrading the service experience of a user.